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Uncle Sherman

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About Uncle Sherman

  • Birthday 04/03/1942

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    New York
  • Interests
    I'm retired, single and on a couple of pensions and SS and have all my time to myself, so I'm interested in everything! Mostly mechanical and technical stuff- cars, antique outboard motors, motorcycles, guns, ham radio, computer electronics, photography, and such. Otherwise I have a collection of classical music and movies on DVD's and tape; I collect books; I dabble in gardening and cooking; I tutor in college math and physics when asked (the remains of my career); I babysit my grandchildren on the only schedule I have to keep. This is probably the best time in my life, all things considered.

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  1. My '73 240Z has a 350 GM small block and a 200 4R trans installed. Currently the shifter is a ratchet thing that I don't like. I'd like to switch to a Lokar, who make a few different types - floor mount, trans mount or cable operated. Does anyone know which one would be the best or the easiest to install? If you use a Lokar, how long should the lever be? They make them in sizes from 6" to way too long. Thanks for any advice.
  2. Boy, am I ever out of place here! I bought a '73 240Z with a 350" GM V-8/TH350 installed, with a lot left to do to finish the project. My then-wife seemed to have an interest in hot rods and such and I thought we might share interests in the Datsun and thereby save our marriage, which was in trouble then. Didn't work, and I kept the car in the ensuing split. I finished the installation and soon learned that the TH350 was the wrong trans for the car- cruising at highway speeds meant way too many revs and so was uncomfortable to drive. The car sat in my garage for a long time while I went about other diversions; about 2 years ago I swapped the 3 speed auto for a 200-4R overdrive 4 speed. Now the highway revs are reasonable and the car is comfortable enough to be a daily driver. But now I want to swap the automatic for a Tremec 5 or 6 speed manual, which I'll undertake when the money and time are available. Other interests have come up in the rotation as the weather morphs into winter so garage projects are on hold until the spring. I'm 68 and retired from a local state college physics department where I helped students learn physics (or tried to help, physics ain't easy), and from the Air Force where I had 4 years active duty during the Viet Nam war and 31 years in the Reserve at a local C-130 wing. Nearly all my time is taken up with stuff I like to do- cars, motorcycles, guns, photography, model railroads, antique outboards, amateur radio, computer electronics, cooking, etc, etc. Life post retirement is a BALL! Here's a couple of my cars:
  3. There's a lot to read in this thread, and I admit to not having read all of it so it's possible some of this will have been written here already. Nonetheless here's a few thoughts. First, some background. I wanted to be a pilot when I graduated from high school, but my family wouldn't fund Emory Riddle or Parks College, so, given that I liked tinkering with motors and cars and was pretty good at it, I was forced as a second choice (my folks' first choice) to major in engineering at a big local state university. Didn't go well and I flunked out. After a year of going from 2-S to 1-A in draft status (this was in the 1960's), I went to a local smaller private college and majored in math, at least in part to regain my student deferment. That didn't go well either, so in order to get away from the anger and angst in my family (I was a commuter at both institutions) I enlisted in the Air Force. I did well on the assessment tests and wound up taking a year of training as a radio repair technician. 4 years later I was discharged, and after a couple of civilian jobs fixing electronic stuff I got a job at a local state college fixing lab equipment in the Physics Department, which also meant fixing stuff I never even heard of for all the science departments. This led to explaining how the equipment worked to the students that used some of it (freshman and sophomore labs), which grew into explaining the physics involved, then to explaining how to do their homework (I had department copies of the textbooks they used and knew the assignments, and with the help of a couple of professors who would help me- I had a coffee pot in my shop and they all were coffee drinkers- I learned enough to be useful as a tutor.) This grew into running remedial study sessions and as-needed impromptu classes for those who needed a second explanation of how the physics worked, and refresher classes in Algebra, Calculus and Trigonometry for those who hadn't gotten that level of math education in high school. Finally, a department chairman who was interested in helping students (not at all a universal commitment among the PhD faculty) told me that if I got a degree in physics, they could let me teach freshman classes in math-based physics in the evening session. So at age 55 I got a B.S. in Physics, after taking 42 credits of physics and 15 credits in Math, and spent the last years of my career teaching and tutoring which by then made up about a half or more of my duties. What I learned: 1) There's a difference between "learning about" physics and "doing" physics. "Learning about" physics looks like a stereotypical freshman history course- memorize all the facts and recall them when asked. "Doing" physics means being able to solve math problems, being able to see connections and cause-effect relationships between the concepts and the principles that physics deals with in the natural world. Learning to "do" physics is learning a craft, a process, of learning to use the tools of mathematics to find answers and build knowledge and understanding from knowledge and understanding gained previously by the same process. This "knowledge" is knowing a process, a craft, a skill set of the same nature as the skill set of a concert pianist or a toll-and-die machinist, or a pilot. Because it's so vertically structured, as are any of these- you have to know "A" before you can reasonably understand "B", and you need both of them to get a handle on "C"- physics requires that a student "get" the facts taught AND the techniques and skills that are used on them (the math of calculus, trig, geometry, algebra, and onwards into pretty sophisticated math topics) to advance his understanding and build his skill set at "doing" physics, both of which are the real learning goals in physics classes. "Doing" math is a prerequisite to "doing" physics, and "doing" physics is a prerequisite of "doing" engineering, since engineering is applied physics; that is, engineering is physics with ALL the factors included (no massless string or absent friction, etc). Math is the first skill set needed since Newton (along with others) had to invent Calculus to explain the natural world- "do" physics. 2) There are plenty of "professors" who couldn't teach pigeons how to defecate because they were hired for how well they learn (a PhD is no small feat), not how well they teach. Even in small schools, it's much more important how a faculty person generates grants than how well they teach students, which seems to be the last concern for pretty much everybody in the chain of command from the classroom to the president of the place. But that's not to say that NObody cares- seek out those that see it differently. 3) In some academic departments, the attitude isn't one of "growing the knowledge of the students", it's being a "gatekeeper"- no one gets to earn credits or a degree unless they can survive the program which, as someone wrote here before, seems to be the goal. Only the really smart survive, no mediocre or average students, only straight A types, so as to be sure no one goes forth from the institution who could embarrass them. Getting a B.S. degree in a hard science at an institution where terminal degrees are offered is more difficult because they don't spend a lot of attention or resources on the undergrad program, their interest is in the grad school and they tacitly assign the role of "filter" to their undergrad program, making it a "gatekeeper" for their grad school. If a Master's or PhD is the goal, it's best to get a B.S. at Podunk Tech (as long as its students do well on GRE's) and go to BigDeal University for the grad degrees, since BigDeal is geared up for that and it's the last school that you went to that has the weight in your resume. 4) Sitting in a physics or math lecture and understanding everything the teacher is saying isn't going to get you through an exam, because understanding how they went about solving problems isn't anywhere the same as solving them yourself, which is how you're tested- YOU have to generate the steps to solution and do the math- use the tools- in exams. "Knowing" this stuff isn't shown in only understanding the work of others, it's more important that you can do the work from scratch yourself. Just because you can identify all the piano music written by Chopin doesn't mean you can play it on a piano; if that's what you want or need to do, you need to practice playing the piano. As I wrote, it's a skill set, that's learned only by practice, practice, practice. What one needs to get from being in such a class is best gotten by doing problems over and over until one understands how to do it. What goes on in class is only at best a support for that practice, the beginning knowledge that must be honed and polished. The student must make the real gain for themselves by being proactive, aggressive in doing a lot of active pencil-work alone in the stacks or Starbucks or wherever. Hours of homework practicing problem-solving skills using math, the principles of the science and the tenets of critical thinking (the most important intellectual skill of all of them in every phase of life all the time) are the ingredients for success. 5) Some subjects one can learn just by listening to lectures and/or reading the book, some other topics one can learn just by working their butts off and ignoring the book and the lectures. But math and physics need both- not many students can pass a physics or math class as they are taught at most institutions by just reading the text and listening to the lectures; they can't pass by ignoring those and doing a million practice problems either, it takes both. That's why good grades in physics- university level physics, that is, "doing" the math at the level required of science and engineering majors- stands out on anyone's transcript whatever their major was. Best of luck and my fervent hope you succeed at what you set out to do. Don't be discouraged if you can help it, keep plugging and seeking, and you'll succeed, and gain the most powerful satisfaction available.
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